A corporate tie up between Vodafone UK and Liberty Global is back on the negotiating table, multiple sources have told The Register.
The fourth floor of Voda’s Newbury HQ has been sealed off with access only granted to execs from both firms, insiders claimed. Andrea Salvato, SVP and chief development officer at Liberty Global …

COMMENTS

Emotive?

Don't make me laugh. A natural tie up between two companies whose business model is high prices and poor service, albeit with an underlying network assets that are (by sector standards) pretty good largely for historic reasons than thanks to current management.

Sadly there's another common trend that looks set to play out again, and that is corporate shenanigans that invariably add billions of "goodwill" to the balance sheet, and result in ever increasing prices for customers.

Re: Emotive?

Re: Emotive?

Despite the name in the UK, (Virgin, and bizarre re-name to Virgin in Ireland) Liberty Global's UK and Irish Cable operations have more now in common with UPC (their Dutch cable Co), though Liberty is a USA outfit.

After massive upgrade after purchase of Chorus (total junk) and NTL (not so bad) in Ireland, Liberty rebranded it all with UPC and the Tulip logo. Then after buying the UK Virgin Cable (and RENTING the Virgin name) they rebranded UPC in Ireland as Virgin (bizarre!) with Richard Branson appearing at a launch and many silly Irish media thought Virgin had bought UPC, when in fact the reverse was true.

Three here is rubbish because they sell data too cheap and don't build enough masts. Unlike UK, Three was allowed to take over O2 Ireland (Spanish Telefonica owned), despite all is outsourced and Three was not meeting licence conditions for years.

The Vodafone in Ireland isn't the cheapest, but where there is coverage, it works. Here in Ireland Vodafone partners with ESB for Fibre and took over all BT's retail (from BT's take over of ESAT).

They renewed their MVNO deal with EE for 5 years at the start of 2017, but I wonder if the BT/EE deal has got them wanting to move away from a direct competitor (for Virgin Mobile AND fixed-line phone/cable/content) by having their own mobile operation/deal.

It goes round and round

Back in 2000 when Vodafone bought Mannesmann their argument was a mobile only strategy had more value, while Mannesmann was one of the first to argue for the combined service option. Many years and significant write-downs by shareholders (and taxpayers) later they seem to be coming round. Mind you, back then Calao was head of Mannesmann's Italian subsidiary, Omnitel.

Also worth noting that once the UK leaves the EU, there is probably not much to be gained by trying to be a pan-European telco so we might see more of this kind of deal with the European business being managed from the continent. But, hey, UK customers will no longer be disadvantaged by not having to pay ridiculous roaming charges when travelling: what's not to like?

That looks like nothing more than the IWF watch list being dubiously implemented. Content on Imgur fell foul of it so all requests to some IP addresses get routed to a proxy that filters out the nastiness but, of course, can't do anything with HTTPS.

Re: Hello Newbury...

Err no it wont - Vodafone just announced they are re-onshoring 2000 customer service jobs.

Thing is that Vodafone's network has improved dramatically in the past couple of years - if their customer service had improved with it Vodafone would be a bit better off by now - but they're starting to get on top of that now too.

Dumb Question

You say that Liberty doesn't own a mobile business in the UK, but Liberty own Virgin Media, who in turn own Virgin Mobile? Do you mean that Liberty don't own their own mobile infrastructure in the UK? As Virgin Media runs on EE's network.

Re: Dumb Question

Re: Dumb Question

So presumably if this goes through Virgin Mobile subscribers will be switched to Vodafone? That could be "interesting". Perhaps there will be a sharp rise in demand for dual-SIM phones out here in the sticks.

Re: Dumb Question

"Do you mean that Liberty don't own their own mobile infrastructure in the UK?"

Presumably, with all this talk of what they do and don't own, now would be a great time for Liberty Global to buy Arqiva, recently reported as on sale, who own all the masts and national broadcast infrastructure as well.

Multi Play Goliaths bad for competition?

If the Voda + Liberty Global deal is allowed then there is very little way the O2 + Three deal can be blocked as no way that the two will survive against the multi play offering Goliaths (BT and Virgin). and with the possible Murdoch Sky take over. Sky may want their own network rather than being a VMNO on Telefonica (O2) and the only Network options not owned by a competitor would be O2 or Three,